Howard Walker, Staff Reporter
Waterhouse's captain Craig White (right) and Portmore United's Wolry Wolfe battle for possession during Sunday night's late Red Stripe Champions Cup semi-final at the National Stadium. Wolfe scored the final goal in a 3-1 win for Portmore United. - RICARDO MAKYN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
THERE WERE a lot of Red Stripe activities, a lot of Red Stripe girls and two red cards in an eventful game as Portmore United brushed aside Waterhouse 3-1 in the Red Stripe Champions Cup national knock-out championship semi-final and booked their place in next Sunday's final against Tivoli Gardens.
Defending champion Port-more, the in-form team of the moment, easily dispatched premier league favourites Waterhouse, which ended with only nine men after Lance DaCosta and Irvino English saw red.
OPENED SCORING
The ever-dangerous Kevin Deerr opened the scoring in the 21st minute after being set up by a Demar Stewart header from a corner kick.
The wily Demar Phillips equalised nine minutes later after latching on to a pin-point cross from Irvino English in the 32nd minute.
Portmore once again went in front in the 49th minute when Jason Morrison turned in a right-sided cross that was whipped in hard and low across the face of the goal by Anthony Bennett.
Portmore were hard-pressed to hold the lead even though the Waterhouse team disintegrated with Lance Dacosta and Irvino English both receiving stupid red cards.
Then with Waterhouse pressing full throttle for an equaliser, substitute Kemeel Wolfe drove the final nail into their coffin with a 90th minute strike after getting a deflection off the goalkeeper and waiting for a few seconds before kicking into an empty net.
Winning coach, Paul Young, said after playing Waterhouse three times they finally got the better of them.
"I told my team we played Waterhouse three times this season and all three times they scored on us first. Let's score first and let them chase us today and we did just that," said Young.
"I thought we had a second goal that was disallowed in the first half, but I told my players to forget about that and score some more," he added of Wolfe's strike that was incorrectly waved off for offside.
MANY ERRORS
Meanwhile Wayne Fair-clough, coach of Waterhouse blamed too many errors for his team's demise.
"I thought we made a lot of unforced errors and Portmore came and played a more disciplined game than us. We squandered a lot of chances and our defensive unit did not mark as tight as they could," he analysed.
With Waterhouse trailing 1-2 the game was still very much up for grabs until two moments of insanity by DaCosta and English seeing both players red carded a few minutes apart.
YELLOW CARD
The lanky DaCosta picked up his second yellow card for a foul offence and English was late in a sliding challenge at his former teammate Adrian Reid and was shown his second yellow. He got the first yellow card for waving off the assistant referee for an offside call.
"I think Irvino needs to look into himself and try and be a gentleman and I hope that he can learn from this mistake," his coach commented of the first booking."
Some fans hurled plastic bottles of water at the Waterhouse bench after the game and Fairclough said they need to be more understanding.
"Waterhouse is a good unit and the fans need to know that we can't win all the while and they need to learn how to lose sometimes," said Fairclough.
GOALSHEET
Waterhouse 1
Demar Phillips 32nd
Portmore 3
Kevin Deerr 21st, Jason Morrison 49th, Kemeel Wolfe 90th
